“What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” (a Holy Voice)
“If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” (Peter, to the Church)
We’re reading Acts together on Wednesday nights — 7 p.m. on Zoom. I wish you were joining us! We’ve reached the 10th and 11th chapter, and a story that has proven pivotal as any in my years of ministry and faith pilgrimage. If you don’t know the story, prepare for a bombshell! But don’t start unless you are willing to engage the Living God.
To put it very briefly, Peter is praying and hungry, and has a daydream. he sees a sheet coming down from heaven full of food he’s not allowed too eat, along with these words from some Holy Voice: “Get up, Peter; kill and eat!” Of course Peter refuses, as one faithful to the law (and so to God) is bid to do. The voice speaks again: “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”
It is what Willie Jennings calls “God’s revolution of inclusion”. And I am intrigued to reflect on how we usually see this as the conversion and ingrafting of the gentiles, I’d like to push back, and call it the conversion (one of the many and countless) of Peter. And, hopefully, God’s Spirit can convert me in this way too, and us together.
Quoting at length from Called To Be Church: The Book of Acts For a New Day by Anthony Robinson and Robert Wall:
“Contrary to much theology and practice, the text suggests that the field for mission and conversion may not be solely, or even primarily, outside the church doors, or in non-Christian cultures, or among those who have not yet met Christ. Peter’s conversion suggests that the mission field may be, equally, inside our sanctuaries, in the life of our own congregations, and in our own land and culture. Conversion and transformation continue — and thus need to continue– in our lives and churches today because God is a living God, because God is still speaking, and because God is once again doing a new thing (Isa. 43:19)…the shadow side of the embrace of conversions in some traditions is that it creates a false sense of security and assumptions of complacency: “We’re saved. We’re done. we have become Christians.” We are not done — nor are we finished…The need for new conversion, fresh transformation, and deepened faith continues. It may be that crucial move in renewing congregations today is a new recognition that it is we ourselves — pastors, lay leaders, teachers, and Christian congregants — who need conversion, transformation, healing, changed minds, and changed hearts most of all. If Peter, the lead apostle, the rock upon whom Jesus would found his church, required continuing and even shocking conversion and transformation, who are we to rest on our laurels?”
Convert me, I say, I plead, I pray! Holy Spirit, make my life a more continual open and pliable space to see with God’s eyes, and love with God’s love. I want to learn the posture of Peter, who had to open up, change and trust to be able to say, “Who am I to get in the way of God?” Get rid of whatever’s in my way — my fears, my certainties about the Living God, and the way I convince myself and those around me that God, once alive, is no more — that there’s nothing new under the sun taking shape. Forgive me, and form me into one who welcomes and loves and includes all people as you wish.
Read, reflect, open up, pray with regret, and start wondering what God’s Spirit is doing these days. And join me in praying for courage to change in ways that bring us closer to reflecting the image of the Living God.
Peter Hawkinson
Comments